At 94-years old, Col. Ralph Puckett received the Medal of Honor, presented by President Joe Biden in the White House last week. The highest medal for valor was awarded for actions Puckett took as a young lieutenant in 1950 at Hill 205 during the Korean War.
Leading a Ranger company, they captured Hill 205 less than sixty miles from the Chinese border but found it abandoned. The enemy departed only to launch a counter-attack, first with indirect fire and then with a ground assault of Chinese troops that outnumbered the Americans ten to one.
Leaving his foxhole, Puckett moved from one fighting position to the next distributing ammunition and encouragement to his Rangers as human wave attacks threatened to overwhelm them.
During this time, he was wounded by shrapnel but continued to press on. He called in artillery strikes on the enemy until a mortar landed in his foxhole, shredding his legs.
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Puckett ordered his men to withdraw and to leave him behind so that he would not slow them down. Two of his Rangers blew off his order, picked him up, and carried him to safety. He survived the war, but it wasn't his last. He also served in Vietnam where he was also decorated for actions under fire.
Years later, Col. Puckett became the honorary Colonel of the 75th Ranger Regiment, and he was someone I looked up to and admired as a young man in 3rd Ranger Battalion.
The position was no mere honorarium, but something Col. Puckett took deadly seriously. My Team Leader told me about Col. Puckett coming out to do rope bridges in the swamps of Florida Phase of Ranger School. He must have been in his 70s by this time.
It didn't matter how late it was, Col. Puckett would come to see us train in the middle of the night, observing us out at ranges where we would train on direct action raids. Afterward, Col. Puckett would take a few moments to impart his advice to us during after-action reviews.
"Don't bunch up," was a common, and accurate, critique to us since a single grenade or machine gun burst could take out an entire fire team if they clustered together.
More than one Platoon Sergeant had a story about such training going wrong, having a bunch of Rangers caught up and tangled in triple strand concertina wire they were supposed to be breached during a training exercise, while Col. Puckett would say over their shoulder, "this would have worked better if you had practiced it in rehearsals."
Col. Puckett has done so much for the Rangers it is impossible to describe, much less quantify the number of young men he mentored over the years. As our honorary Colonel, he was and is a living symbol of the high esprit de corps of the Ranger Regiment.
What stands out to me is when he came and spoke to the battalion's fire team leaders one day. Col. Puckett impressed upon us how important his team leaders were in combat, how they made the difference. Reading his Medal of Honor citation those words make that much more sense to me all these years later, that no matter how junior you are that your actions matter and the consequences are critical to the mission.
For actions on and off the battlefield, Col. Puckett will always be remembered as one of our heroes.
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